Canada beats US to the punch and adds black woman to currency

Remember when Harriet Tubman was supposed to be on the U.S. $20 bill? It was one of the many things President Obama fought for in his last year in office. However, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin basically shut that down. In January, he said, “We haven’t made any decisions on whether we will change the bill or won’t change the bill.” Obviously this means, a Black woman will not be on any U.S. currency during the Trump administration. Now, Canada has decided to get with the times.

The Guardian reports,” Civil rights pioneer Viola Desmond was selected from the more than 26,000 submissions that rolled in after the Bank of Canada announced plans to put a Canadian woman on the country’s circulating currency for the first time.” If you aren’t familiar with Desmond, back in 1946 she refused to leave the whites-only section of a Canadian movie theater. This act of protest helped to propel Canada’s civil rights movement and Nova Scotia’s legal end to segregation in 1954.

Watch a brief video of her story below:

Viola Desmond passed away in 1965 at 50 years old and now she will be the new face of Canada’s $10 dollar bill, see below:

The Guardian also reports,” On Thursday, Desmond’s sister Wanda Robson, now in her 90s, was on hand to unveil Canada’s first banknote featuring a black person. ‘It’s beyond what I ever thought. It’s beautiful,’ she told an audience in Halifax.” Viola Desmond is the firstCanadian woman to appear on one of the country’s circulating bank notes.